Abstract
Many legal theorists have expounded conceptions of law or legal systems that depend heavily upon a key role to be played by legal officials. In most cases, it is not just the actions, but the beliefs of those legal officials that make the difference between a legal system and simple control by coercion. In H.L.A. Hart’s positivist theory, legal officials create legal facts by accepting legal rules (especially a central validity rule) from an internal point of view. Since these legal facts are social facts, their dependence upon the acceptance of legal officials makes it possible for ordinary citizens to have legal obligations without those citizens ever accepting that they do..